Westinghouse To Be Sold For $7.9 Billion In Sign of Nuclear Power Revival (reuters.com) 88
Cameco and Brookfield Renewable Partners said on Tuesday they would acquire nuclear power plant equipment maker Westinghouse Electric in a $7.9-billion deal including debt, amid renewed interest in nuclear energy. Reuters reports: The deal for one of the most storied names in the American power industry at an equity value of $4.5 billion comes at a time when nuclear power is seeing an uptick in interest amid an energy crisis in Europe and soaring crude oil and natural gas prices. Nuclear power is also key for countries to meet global net-zero carbon emission goals and could be on the cusp of a boom seen after the 1970s oil crisis.
Cameco will own 49% of Westinghouse, while Brookfield Renewable and its institutional partners will own the rest. Westinghouse was acquired from Toshiba by Brookfield Business Partners , an affiliate of Canadian asset manager Brookfield, out of bankruptcy in 2018, for $4.6 billion, including debt. Brookfield Business said in a separate statement it expects to generate about $1.8 billion in proceeds from the sale of its 44% stake in Westinghouse, with the balance distributed among institutional partners. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2023. Brookfield Renewable and its partners will pay about $2.3 billion for the deal, whereas Cameco will incur equity costs of about $2.2 billion. Westinghouse's existing debt structure will remain in place.
Cameco will own 49% of Westinghouse, while Brookfield Renewable and its institutional partners will own the rest. Westinghouse was acquired from Toshiba by Brookfield Business Partners , an affiliate of Canadian asset manager Brookfield, out of bankruptcy in 2018, for $4.6 billion, including debt. Brookfield Business said in a separate statement it expects to generate about $1.8 billion in proceeds from the sale of its 44% stake in Westinghouse, with the balance distributed among institutional partners. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2023. Brookfield Renewable and its partners will pay about $2.3 billion for the deal, whereas Cameco will incur equity costs of about $2.2 billion. Westinghouse's existing debt structure will remain in place.
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
https://renx.ca/brookfield-to-... [renx.ca]
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP partnered w/ Intel to create the chip fabs in north america and own 49%.
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Hopefully there is enough money in "adapting for the future" to stave off the dangerous giant that is the fossil fuel industries, because Capitalism and all
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
>it was the impending doom of an ice age up to that point
No, that was an outlier story that got picked up by the media, it has always been global warming since the last little ice age [scienceblogs.com]
Nuclear was on the way to powering the US until two things happened, a schlock movie "The China Syndrome" was released just before the Three Mile Island accident, and petrol companies started paying the head of the Sierra club to go anti-nuclear
From the point on, the politicians in favor of nuclear power faded into the background and the coal industry became the primary energy source for America
Coal: 32.72 deaths per terawatt hour
Nuclear: 0.03 deaths per terawatt hour
Check out the latest Freakonomics, if we had stayed on nuclear power in the 70's we would probably not be facing any global warming crisis [freakonomics.com]
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Time required for cleanup after a coal disaster - days.
Time required for cleanup after a nuclear disaster - still ongoing, decades at least.
You were doing really well. Up until the point everybody died.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Time required for cleanup after a coal disaster - days.
Tell that to people that live around working coal mines and power plants. Or around coal trains.
Any use of coal is a constant disaster. There is never cleanup.
Time required for cleanup after a nuclear disaster - still ongoing
Total surface area affected compared to coal - like a piece of paper on a football field.
If you actually cared about the environment you would push nuclear as hard as you could. But you don't care about pollution, just spreading fear.
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How many trillions is it costing to clean up that Japanese nuclear "not disaster".
Remember that one time Putin blackmailed the whole of Europe over that coal mine he threatened to blow up.
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Funny how you have to use AC to post, and you resort to insults hen your childish claims are disproved
Face it, the environmental movements have been used like a sock puppet by the fossil fuel industry to increase their profits, while causing global warming
It all could have been avoided by sticking to nuclear power and working to make it even safer than it is
comparing apples to toothbrushes [Re: Interesting] (Score:2)
Fukushima cleanup costs are less than Biden has spent sending weapons to Ukraine.
Whataboutism at its finest!
You leftists are going to lost the cost argument
Please state this more clearly: you are stating here that you are opposed to sending weapons to Ukraine?
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OK Fukushima cost less lives than the Jonestown dam Disaster.
Did less environmental damage than the Exon Valdez
Damaged less area than Buffalo Creek Dam Disaster that wiped out 16 towns
And in no way compares to the Banqiao Dam disaster.
Good job arguing from ignorance and trying to use someone as a strawman.
Are you proud of yourself?
Maybe you can slap 5 year olds to boost your ego a little more.
I don't even want to go into the ad hominem attack on the prior poster. BTW most people are against senseless slaug
The prior poster [Re:comparing apples to toot...] (Score:2)
...I don't even want to go into the ad hominem attack on the prior poster...
I was responding to the prior poster's words "You leftists... waste trillions every year."
First, that is whataboutism; second, the cheap shot was indeed ad hominem, and third, I am not even a leftist.
If you want to criticize somebody for ad hominem attacks, start with "the prior poster".
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Unless you were the jackass taking shots anonymously that's not an ad hominem at you.
The AC deserved far worse and certainly was a leftist.
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Do you really have no idea what Fukushima cost...
Banqiao killed between 20,000 and 240,000 people. We don't know for sure because communist regime doing the reporting.
There isn't a single disaster that I listed that didn't kill more people than any and all radiological disasters.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Time required for cleanup after a coal disaster - days.
Indeed. You can measure anything in days. Such as the 2556 days required to "clean up" the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill at a cost of over $1bn, rendering the local town uninhabitable and killing not only people during the incident but also killing and maiming those who cleaned it up over the many years that took.
And it's not the only one.
And that's before you realise coal is an ongoing disaster in normal operation killing people and destroying the surrounding environment.
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Time required for cleanup after a coal disaster - days.
Coal is an ongoing disaster that never gets cleaned up.
Google "radiation from coal power", "sea mercury from coal", etc., for more info.
Just plain bananas [Re:Interesting] (Score:2)
Google radiation from bananas.
https://boingboing.net/2010/08... [boingboing.net]
"The Potassium-40 in bananas is a particularly poor model isotope to use because the potassium content of our bodies seems to be under homeostatic control. When you eat a banana, your body's level of Potassium-40 doesn't increase. You just get rid of some excess Potassium-40. The net dose of a banana is zero."
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You were never doing really well, because your very first sentence is a fucking lie.
Just this one incident [wikipedia.org] took 10 years to clean up, after spending over a billion dollars to clean it up and more than 30 people dead, and many people working on the cleanup developing brain cancer, lung cancer, and leukemia.
And that doesn't even consider that the nominal operating mode of a coal plant is to pump poison into the atmosphere, causing elevated asthma and respiratory illness to people living downwind as far as 40
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You mean besides the person I replied to, which was comparing coal favorably to nuclear?
I swear the level of discussion around here has made it practically useless to even try. It's no wonder this site has become a ghost town in comparison to 10 years ago.
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Nah, what killed nuclear was cost. In the 50s everyone thought it could be done cheaply, until they realized that nuclear accidents were pretty serious and more importantly expensive. It also took time to learn all the failure modes that needed to be protected against.
Around 1.5% of all civilian nuclear reactors ever built have melted down.
Detailed list and analysis: https://skeptics.stackexchange... [stackexchange.com]
That's not counting all the non-meltdown accidents that resulted in expensive losses.
Attempts to reduce the c
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> In the 50s everyone thought it could be done cheaply
Actually, if you read contemporary reports, this was not the case. There were ongoing arguments that the complexity of the plants would override the cheapness of the fuel. Nothing to do with safety per se, the plants were simply more complex to build and operate and people were definitely pointing out that this was going to make the economics edgy.
The best example of this is Strauss' now famous "too cheap to meter" claims (and no, he was absolutely NO
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It is simply sad that you are modded troll.
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There are too many nuke fan trolls with mod points. I'm fairly sure some of them are being paid, like MacMann and all his sock puppets.
The nuclear industry is dying and now apparently so desperate that it is willing to spend money on astroturfing sites like Slashdot. Maybe they don't have the money to set up a fake university like Prager U and churn out YouTube videos. What crap job though, shitposting on every Slashdot story even vaguely related to electricity or the environment. How many times can you sli
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I don't even think they're paid. Zealots don't require being paid to spread their zealotry.
There are arguments to be made about safety of nuclear power on both sides.
There are arguments to be made about environmental benefits of nuclear power on both sides.
There are arguments to be made about what to do with spent nuclear fuel on both sides.
There are no arguments to be made about the cost. The numbers are in and cannot be argued - it's staggering what it takes in time and capital to build, operate, and de
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For the record, I'd rather invest in wind power and reliable energy storage, but this comment is flat-out wrong:
If we were to fix that comment, it would look more like this: "it's staggering what it takes in time and capital to build and decommission a 60's-era designed nuclear reactor with excess regulation due to legitimate nuclear proliferation concerns and no
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Have you run the numbers on the total costs (including land use) for replacing fossil fuels with wind power?
Just wait until the NIMBY idiots start suing every windmill install
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Yeah, I hear you have to pay through the nose for land use, especially for offshore wind...
You know that a lot wind farms are built on top of actual farms, right? Because wheat and corn don't give a fuck if there's a wind turbine a couple hundred feet above? Neither do cows, pigs, chickens, or sheep. The farmers like the additional revenue from their land, and also don't give a fuck if they have to not hit a wind turbine pylon with their tractors while driving less than 10 mph in their fields - you know,
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Simple thoughts for simple minds
It is actually a huge logistics issue, mainly because of the large swaths of land that are needed to provide necessary energy
Photovoltaic (PV) solar farms have relatively low capacity factors because unsurprisingly, the PV panels do not generate electricity at night or on cloudy days. The capacity factor of solar PV varies from 17–28%. Thus to generate the same amount of electricity as the aforementioned nuclear plant, a solar farm would need an installed capacity of 3.
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Way to not comprehend a single thing I said, and just shift from complaining about non-problems with wind power, to non-problems with solar power.
What part of "The land used for renewables generation can also be used for other shit at the same time" is so hard to understand? When you put solar panels on top of a parking lot, can you no longer park cars there? Or, just maybe, is it a better parking lot because there's now shade to keep your car cool during summer months? When you take a 500 acre field of
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Sure, just try to imagine that anybody who disagrees with you is a corporate shill, that will ease your mind
But, it is not true
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You also have to add in the cost of Federal insurance for nuclear plants. No private company will insure nuclear plants because of the potential high cost of an "accident" so the Federal government insures all nuclear plants. Hard to put a precise number on this since there is no free market for this insurance but it is billions of dollars.
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>>Nah, what killed nuclear was cost
Costs that were intentionally raised by nuisance lawsuits paid for by petrol companies and raised by "environmentalists"
Sierra Club :: Has taken $136 million from nat gas/ renewables interests that stand to profit from the closure of nuclear plants. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) :: Has minimum of $70 million directly invested in oil and gas renewable energy interests that stand to profit from the closure of nuclear plants. [environmen...ogress.org]
It is well past time for all of yo
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If that was the case then why haven't similar lawsuits been used against wind and solar? Or electric cars for that matter.
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Sure, just read the links:
https://stopthesethings.com/20... [stopthesethings.com]
https://www.rechargenews.com/w... [rechargenews.com]
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And this:
https://inewsource.org/2021/09... [inewsource.org]
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> , a schlock movie "The China Syndrome" was released
If the movie is schlock, how did it have so much impact that it destroyed an industry led by some of the US's largest companies? Seems it must have been one hell of a movie! ... and it was pretty good by any objective measure. If you divorce yourself of your political feelings on the underlying topic, it's a pretty-good techno-thriller. The opening scene, adapted from a real event, is nail-biting. It features some great actors performing great acting a
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If the movie is schlock, how did it have so much impact that it destroyed an industry led by some of the US's largest companies?
A FUD movie is going to have far more impact on an ignorant populace that has absolutely no clue how a nuclear reactor actually works than any post-movie debunking of the FUD will ever have. Just the same as what we see about the 2020 election - the lies came first, and disproving the lies is much harder work after the damage has already been done.
Also because in the history of FUD, rationality has rarely won the day. For example: if you are afraid of heights, do you readily and easily walk out onto one o
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“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Concurrance (Score:1)
I concur!
Uncertain history. (Score:2)
I had interviewed with British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) back in 2003 (then owner of Westinghouse) just after finishing with the US Navy.
As much as I wanted to see a future with BNFL, I saw that they were only maintaining, not growing, and went a different path.
I want to see nuclear power flourish as a means to stay independent from nations from nations that would use our fuel addiction against us. I want us to retire fragile 60 year old plants with updated designs.
History has shown that not enough mon
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I'd just be happy with serious R&D on nuclear designs. If people judged cars by how reactors are, we would be saying how dangerous the Model T is because you have to go out and crank start it. We need more generations of reactor designs, thorium, and reactors that can go into an unpowered SCRAM condition indefinitely. We also need more "install and forget" reactors that are just dropped in, then yanked out after the fuel is gone. We also need breeder reactors so waste fuel can be reprocessed and use
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The thing about a car is that if you crash it the very worst possible outcome isn't that bad in the overall scheme of things. It's not like a meltdown where the cost runs into hundreds of billions of Euros.
A better comparison would be the aircraft industry. Air accidents aren't as bad as meltdowns, but they are still potentially quite bad and we rightly require the industry to have very high safety standards.
They have nuclear district heating in China. It's a mixed bag, great when it works but sometimes it
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I have wondered why nuclear heating isn't used more often. In cities where they are using centralized heat, it is one of the most economical ways to keep a place warm, as well as generate electricity. Of course, having 100% electric heat means that if the main power plant is offline, some other place can provide heat, but the energy wasted just in moving from heat to spinning motion to electricity, just to go back to resistant heat is significant.
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> In cities where they are using centralized heat
How many of those are there though?
There is one in my city, Ajax, the plant is central and powers a couple of the buildings around it. I recall one in Sudbury as well.
But that's it. Of the dozen cities I've lived over the years, these are the only two examples I can think of, and they were both pretty small outfits.
> back to resistant heat is significant
False dichotomy. People don't widely use resistance heat (outside Quebec anyway!). The actual competi
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> If people judged cars by how reactors are, we would be saying how dangerous the Model T is because you have to go out and crank start it. We need more
This statement is true for all interpretations. It is true it is dangerous to crank (people got hurt all the time) and it is true that people complained about it, and it is true they did something about it.
That "something", however, increased the price of the cars. This was fine, the people driving them thought that electric start was totally worth the mo
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Again... it's the cost.
Much cheaper to build new solar, wind, and battery plants.
Financial Engineering at its finest. (Score:5, Informative)
Brookfield Renewable Partners is buying Westinghouse from Brookfield Business Partners. Coincidently enough for what Brookfield Business Partners paid to buy them from Toshiba back in 2016, plus a ton of debt.
This looks like private equity shell games. One Brookfield is going to collect over $3B in quick profit from selling a very troubled company, and the Brookfield/Westinghouse side is going to be loaded up with debt to pay them.
Have we seen this story before? It sure seems familiar. Anyone recall how it ends? Something along the lines of Westinghouse being bled dry to pay off the debt, until they go belly up and we hear how unforeseeable market forces were to blame.
The only twist here is that these parasites have become so bold they don't even try to disguise the shenanigans with some creative renaming. Guess who the overseeing deal management company is? Brookfield Asset Management. Can't make this stuff up.
In the old days they would have enough respect for propriety to use some Bahama based shell corp with a name like Future Energy.
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Yeah, being sold off is usually not a sign of strength, but don't expect slashdot to understand finance.
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Brookfield Renewable Partners is being positioned to take advantage of expected government grants and tax breaks to build out new nuclear plants and maintain old ones
I for one, applaud this move
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> Brookfield Renewable Partners is being positioned to take advantage of expected government grants and tax breaks
If these actually exist, why wouldn't they leave it at Brookfield Business Partners?
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It's risk management.
If you put the risky asset into its own corporate entity and the risk doesn't pay, you've limited the blast radius so it doesn't take out the whole damn business. However, if it pays off, you still benefit.
It's basically a really big version of putting your rental home into an LLC to prevent someone from slipping on the driveway and suing you for everything you have including your home you live in, your car, your 401(k), and all the money in your savings account.
Re: Financial Engineering at its finest. (Score:2)
And no one is mentioning that the whole company was sold for less than the cost of one nuclear plant. Not exactly a vote of confidence.
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Just a reminder, these are the people in control of the firms which would build nuclear projects. Even back when Westinghouse was a competent nuclear contractor building a plant was insanely expensive, fraught with cost and schedule overruns. Is anyone under the delusion that things have improved now that investment bankers have taken over?
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Its not nefarious like you make it sound. They aren't "parasites" like you assume.
BBP is selling 44% of its stake in Wh to Cameco. Cc, being a Uranium fuel supplier, has a vested interest in growing Wh. They will own 49% to ensure they don't have controlling interest and avoid the additional vertical integration and security regulatory oversight & paperwork. But basically they will run the ops.
BBP on the other hand is basically going into a partnership with Cc. But of course they want to protect th
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> So they create a new entity
What now? BRP is hardly new, they formed in 2011.
Re: Financial Engineering at its finest. (Score:2)
Does that matter? The point is to divest liability.
In the example I gave, say you had another company that you used for partnerships or special types of houses. Does it really matter if you put that partnership house into it or a new one? Both protect your first home.
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> Westinghouse being bled dry
They're already vampiric, what's left to bleed?
Irony: some time ago someone licensed the Westinghouse name to put on solar panels. Now it's USB chargers and rebranded LCD TVs. I mean, who wouldn't want to buy a reactor from the (totally not the same) company that sells its name to TongFang?
umm, no. (Score:4, Informative)
"at a time when nuclear power is seeing an uptick in interest"
It isn't though. Nowhere in the world is investing in nuclear energy at rates even _remotely_ close to renewables and no nation predicts it will make up more than a small percentage of their overall energy mix this century.
"at a time when nuclear power is seeing an uptick in interest"
No it isn't. Contemporary studies do not suggest this and in fact suggest quite the opposite. That nuclear is so slow and expensive that investment in it would actually slow down our march toward carbon neutrality.
They might have wanted to get some facts from proper energy researchers and no just taken the word of a Uranium company on face value.
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nuclear is so slow and expensive that investment in it would actually slow down our march toward carbon neutrality.
Indeed. This is especially true for Westinghouse's flagship AP1000 reactor [wikipedia.org].
Every AP1000 built outside China has been years late and way over budget.
The AP1000 reactors at the Virgil Summer Plant [wikipedia.org] were cancelled after spending $3B because of delays and cost overruns. The mismanagement of the project is often referred to as Nukegate [wikipedia.org].
Even if there is a nuclear revival, it is unlikely to be based on Westinghouse designs.
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Even the ones in China have been delayed. Some were cancelled when Westinghouse went bankrupt in 2017. The ones that are running are having on-going problems too, with one currently offline awaiting investigation and an engineering fix.
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Well, of course. As soon as you announce that you're building a nuke, you are sued, an injunction is granted to stop construction till the legal fees bankrupt the company building the nuke.
And then, a NEW injunction is issued to keep the reactor from being built for another decade or two.
And another one after that.
Repeat until the money to pay for the reactor is all in the lawyers' pockets.
Do remember that the first nuclear reacto
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None of the delays at Summer or Vogtle were caused by civil injunctions.
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> China is building 150 reactors
China is building 21 reactors.
They have *plans* to build more, and that number has reached 150 on occasion, but it is subject to continual change.
But if we simply go by plans, the US is "building" dozens of reactors. You know, like this:
> SMR's-several of which are being built in the US.
Zero SMRs are being built in the US. There are *plans* to build some.
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"It was reported in November 2021 that China planned to build 150 new reactors at a cost of $440bn (2.8trn yuan), which is more reactors than the rest of the world has built over the past 35 years." [energymonitor.ai]
Just that proves the original posters statement was bullshit.
Don't forget. Antinuclear scumbags deserve to die.
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. Nowhere in the world is investing in nuclear energy at rates even _remotely_ close to renewables
China, Russia and France do. France is planning to at worst have half its electricity from nuclear in the future. France and Sweden have more than 60% of their electricity coming from nuclear right now.
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Nowhere in the world is investing in nuclear energy at rates even _remotely_ close to renewables
The US Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Power budget request for 2022 is 1.8 billion dollars [energy.gov] .
I wouldn't say that this is negligible.
Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Westinghouse To Be Sold For $7.9 Billion In Sign of Nuclear Power Revival"
So wait... the company that went bankrupt is being sold off and this is a sign of a nuclear power revival?
When companies are sold off for pennies on the dollar, that's not generally considered a positive sign for either the company or the industry its part of.
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Well, if you want to look at the optimist's side: they actually found a buyer for a bankrupt company that has significant political headwinds to being able to sell their staggeringly expensive products that have fundamental design and operability issues.
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You say that Cameco, *the nuclear fuel provider*, has a long history of opposing Nuclear permits?
Yeah, {{citation needed}} on that one!
You don't even know who they are do you?